


Walk and Talk

by Springmagpies



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Sleep Walking, Sleep talking, Sleepy Cuddles, a bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:46:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22328068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Springmagpies/pseuds/Springmagpies
Summary: The many times Jemma Simmons sleep walked into Fitz's room.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 14
Kudos: 68





	Walk and Talk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AgentOfShip](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentOfShip/gifts).



> This is for the incredible Sabrina (@agentofship on Tumblr)! I know you requested sleepy cuddles but this one sort of got away from me. Hopefully you like it! 💕

The first night in their new apartment at SciOps was the first night Jemma sleepwalked into Fitz’s room. He’d known she’d been prone to it, having had a history of wandering about in her sleep as a child. Her mother used to tell amusing stories involving different episodes of times she had stumble about in her sleep. Jemma always buried herself behind something when her mother started up. Fitz remembered one Christmas dinner their third year at the academy where Jemma hid behind a basket of rolls when her mum brought up the diaper story. 

Fitz also knew it mostly happened to Jemma when she was especially anxious about something or nervous, a time where it was hard for her to sleep. Moving into a new apartment in a new city while starting their new jobs at SciOps was stressful for Fitz so he was unsurprised to see that Jemma was stressed too. However, he was surprised when she wandered into his room at one in the morning, fully dressed for work and not saying anything. 

“Simmons?” he said groggily, propping himself up on his elbow and blinking at her silhouette in the light of the door. She didn’t respond, just walked forward and sat on the edge of his bed. 

“Jems? Are you alright?”

“The sensor needs to be calibrated,” she mumbled. Her face was staring out the window, bathing her face in the light from the streetlamps outside the window. Her eyes were unfocused and it was the faraway look that made Fitz realize what was going on.

He sat up fully, pushing his back against the headboard so he could talk to her better. “Hey, Jemma. I think you’re sleepwalking. We’re going to get you back to bed.”

Careful not to touch her too much, Fitz slid off the side of his mattress and gently brushed his fingers by her elbow to get her to stand.

“The design is incredible, Fitz.” 

“Thank you, Simmons,” Fitz chuckled. She was having a lab dream again and it was good to know his engineering abilities were up to snuff even in her dream world. “Now, careful not to hit the dresser.”

Doing his best to gently sheepdog her back to her room, Fitz followed close to her as she stumbled forward down the narrow hall. When it looked like she was veering, Fitz would gently slide his body between her and the wall to get her back on track. Her room wasn’t too far so it didn’t take too long before she stood before her own bed.

“That’s it, Jems, try and get some sleep,” he soothed as she sank down into her mattress. As carefully as he could, Fitz lifted her legs so that her whole body was on the bed and touched her shoulder to get her to lay down flat. 

Jemma’s lips barely moved as she spoke next, her face snuggling into her pillow. “I think we should make a fleet of them.”

“That’s a great idea, Simmons. I’m sure you’ll remind me in the morning. Goodnight.”

Fitz padded back to his room, collapsing under his covers and falling quickly back to sleep. 

* * *

The second night Jemma sleepwalked into Fitz’s room was on The Bus. Well, he couldn’t tell if she was sleepwalking but she didn’t seem completely awake when she slid the door to his bunk open. 

It had been a terrible night. Coulson had been taken hostage, everyone was traumatized, and Mike Peterson had been murdered, blown off a bridge after attempting to make things right. No one was in a good, or even okay, state of mind, so Fitz wasn’t completely shocked when Jemma dreamily made her way to stand at the edge of his small bed. 

“Hey, can’t sleep?”

She didn’t blink and her mouth didn’t move, she simply sat herself next to him, swung her legs to be parallel with his, and laid her head down next to him. The kind of crappy mattress creaked with all the movement, the sheets rustling as Fitz tried to make room for her. She was solid next to him, her hair fanning out on the pillow and wafting lavender scented air into his nose. There was no getting off the tiny bed without falling flat on his face or rudely and loudly waking her up, which he knew to be very dangerous to do to a sleepwalker. Instead, he moved himself as close to the wall as possible, giving her more room while also making sure none of them touched. She was asleep and wasn’t completely aware of what she was doing and he didn’t want to in any way take advantage or make her uncomfortable. 

Besides, just having her near him was already enough of a comfort to allow him to find the sleep that had been alluding him. And given the fact that she didn’t stir again until the morning, he had been a comfort to her as well.

* * *

She had just returned from Maveth and Jemma Simmons couldn’t help but be different. Fitz had immense sympathy to how she felt, isolated and alone and terrified. No matter the support system you knew you had, being stuck in your head with experiences no one but yourself could imagine was its own special kind of lonely. Still, Fitz tried to be there for her as much as she wanted him to be. He gave her her distance when she wanted him to and was close by when she called for him. 

The first night she had been back, Fitz broke quarantine and came and laid by her bed. Knowing she had been in fight or flight for nearly six months he expected that she’d either wake up disoriented or perhaps her sleepwalking symptoms would pop up again. Whether she slept fine, woke up in the middle of the night, or sleepwalked, Fitz just wanted to make sure she wasn’t scared or alone. 

He really tried to stay awake, be attentive to her actions and keep an eye on her in case she woke up, but the day at the castle had been its own ordeal. His brain was exhausted, his hand ached, and his heart thumped hard and rhythmically in his chest as if to remind him that he hadn’t been breathing. It wasn’t long, with his back up against the hexagonal-patterned wall, that Fitz’s eyes drifted shut and he fell fast asleep.

He woke up bleary eyed and sore with the oddest taste of grainy sand crunching in his molars. Leaning his head forward and shaking the fog from his brain, Fitz registered the weight **on his** leg and the cool hand pressed to his cal **f.** Jemma’s eyes were closed tight and her body was stiff, her body jolting every now and again. But, for the most part, she was sound asleep. Fitz didn’t know whether she had sleep walked to where she was or if she had woken up in a terror and laid herself against him. Whatever the reason, he was glad he had broken quarantine. He was glad she hadn’t been alone.

* * *

Daisy was missing. The base had been in chaos when she hadn’t been seen for the entirety of the day. After Lincoln’s death she had been prone to keeping to her room, meals given to her through her door, the one she quickly shut after a muttered thanks. She didn’t look anyone in the eyes anymore and she seemed to have buried herself deep within her own guilt. 

And then she was just gone. 

It had been Fitz who had come to bring her dinner, knowing full well she had been unresponsive to the call to every other meal that day. She hadn’t answered, hadn’t even given him a go away. Worry and unease had settled in Fitz’s chest and he warned her of his entry, putting the tray of breakfast for dinner down on the floor and breaking open the lock. 

She was just gone.

Then the mad scramble had begun. But it was Daisy and if Daisy didn’t want to be found she wasn’t going to be found. It had been exhausting and Fitz had collapsed onto his bed at one in the morning, his head sinking into the pillows. He breathed in the sweet soft lavender scent and turned to wrap his arm around its source. 

Jemma mumbled in her sleep as Fitz buried his head in the crook of her neck. She hadn’t slept walked in some time but she still talked in her sleep quite frequently. 

“Pancakes,” she whispered into the darkness. Fitz stifled a giggle on her freckled skin. 

“Sounds lovely, Jems.”

She turned with a rustling of sheets and her arm fell over his stomach, her forehead on his chest. “You smell like pancakes, Fitz.”

He kissed the crown of her head, the smell of lavender wonderfully overwhelming to the point that he could almost taste it on his tongue. 

“Jemma, are you awake?”

“Too much syrup, my love. You’re drowning them.”

He sighed and made her hair flutter. “Not awake then.” 

Despite the heat of the bed, Fitz took in a sharp breath when her cold toes brushed the top of his foot. The day had been stressful, he felt a tired headache forming at his temples, but the cold toes working towards his shin grounded him in the reality of where he was. He had Jemma. She was cuddled up next to him talking to him about pancakes in her sleep. Though the world was going topsy turvy, as it often did in SHIELD, he had something to right him.

He had Jemma.

* * *

It had been a dream. A wonderful dream of pouring sunlight, a warm morning shower, and Jemma curled into his side. And then he had woken up. 

Nightmare. Bloody, absolute, terrible nightmare. That’s what the prison was. He had a nice grey box of a room with a lamp and a telly and a desk that looked like it was originally made for dissections. He had a crappy mattress that gave the ones in The Bus a run for their money in terms of size and a ceiling that he swore projected your deepest fears in the dark.

And he was stuck with that  _ voice.  _ The voice he couldn’t bloody kill. He wanted to scream at it half the time and the other half he let it scream at him. Normally he tried to drown it out with football or reading or notes but it was always tough to do in the morning. He was pretty sure it was morning… he couldn’t really tell. It was the morning they had created for him.

Fitz leaned back into the single pillow on the bed, trying to force himself down into the underworld through the mattress. He missed his dream. He missed the sunlight and the shower and the sound of birds. He missed Jemma.

She had been talking to him, still somewhat clinging to sleep with her eyes closed but her mind keen. She had held onto his shirt, her fist wrinkling a circle into the thin white fabric. Her dark hair had been falling around her shoulders in lavender breathing waves, her nose slightly scrunched as she talked.

“Hush, Fitz,” she mumbled.

“Hush?”

“He’s wrong. Tell him to hush.”

Fitz had scooted in his dream, the bed there far comfier than the one he had been in in reality. His eyes scanned her dreamy features, not truly taking it in as much as he had wanted to. She had been clear and blurry all at one, her features focusing and unfocusing and the room around them a haze of sunlight. 

“I love you,” he whispered, his lips hovering by her nose. 

“I love you too.”

His eyes had blinked then, the light too much. “I can’t solve this, Jemma. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Hush.”

She curled in tighter, her fist pulling him closer by the shirt. 

“Jemma--”

“Hush.”

She had kissed him, soft and slow and golden in the sunlight. That’s when he had heard birds and remembered there was a shower. Or perhaps he had wished for a shower and it had appeared. He felt the warm water dripping down his shoulders, not really remembering how both he and Jemma had even made it to the bathroom. 

She kissed him again, this time under the stream of rain-light droplets, and he kissed her back as hard as he could. Know I love you. Know I don’t want to wake up. I don’t want to wake up. I want to be with you. 

The water was fading away like it was a memory and Jemma’s face was going out of focus. 

She wasn’t real. She was a dream. And to be with her he would have to wake up and get to work.

* * *

“No granola bar in Maisie’s lunch,” Jemma said. Her voice was tickling his ear.

“I know,” Fitz replied.

Jemma’s eyes were closed and she was fast asleep. However, her mind was less so.

“She won’t eat it, Fitz.”

After years of sleeping with Jemma and even more years of hearing and seeing her sleep walk and talk, Fitz had come to enjoy hearing some of the dreams she ended up having. That night’s was another production of  _ The Kids are Late for School.  _ It had been a favorite recently what with James just starting Primary School. 

The dream often included Maisie’s picky eating and/or James’ refusal to put on his jumper. That night it appeared to be both. 

“It’s part of the uniform. No beets, Fitz.”

Looking at his wife in the partial darkness, Fitz made a face. “Why would I give her beets, Jems. I’m not evil.” 

“Eat a banana. Good day at school. Love you.”

That made him smile. Despite the broken muffled way she said it in her sleep, Fitz knew Jemma’s familiar morning goodbye. Even in her dreams she stuck to her routine. Grinning, Fitz pressed his chest against her back and kissed her neck softly in the hazy evening air. 

“Goodnight, Jemma.”

And he fell fast asleep himself. 


End file.
